Floridians gave high marks to their hospital stays, but low marks to care in emergency rooms, according to a national poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

"The highest share of excellence, the top of the chart, were for people who were hospitalized,” said Harvard professor and study co-director Robert Blendon.

One of the most prestigious names in health care is taking a stand on food.

This week, Cleveland Clinic announced it would sever ties with McDonald's. As of Sept. 18, the McDonald's branch located in the Cleveland Clinic cafeteria will turn off its fryers and close its doors for good. Its lease will not be renewed.

A development company that acquired the site of the former A.G. Holley state tuberculosis hospital last year in Palm Beach County wants a $1.29 million refund from the state because the property has less land than advertised.

However, state officials contend that while the advertised acreage was an estimate, the Lantana property was sold under "as is, where is" terms.

Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet will be asked next Wednesday to decide whether to approve the requested refund for Lantana Development LLC.

Gov. Rick Scott’s hospital commission, tasked with looking at how taxpayer dollars are used to support health care for the poor, discussed performance funding for hospitals at a meeting Tuesday in Orlando.

The nine-member group delved through detailed hospital statistics, and started brainstorming ideas for how to reform hospital payments.

Tom Kuntz, a former chairman of SunTrust, helped build performance funding metrics for Florida’s university system. Kuntz says the hospital commission could look at a similar system for hospitals.

If you ran down the list of ailments that most commonly kill Americans, chances are you wouldn't think to name sepsis. But this condition, sometimes called blood poisoning, is in fact one of the most common causes of death in the hospital, killing more people than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined.

Jennifer Rodgers learned about sepsis the way many people do — through personal experience.

The former leader of Charlotte Regional Medical Center in Punta Gorda was acquitted Thursday of charges he tried to boost referrals to the hospital by writing false information on letters and signing another doctor’s name to them, the Fort Myers News-Press reports.

Citrus Memorial Health System, a not-for-profit community hospital, is now part of HCA West Florida. Citrus Memorial has a 50-year lease with HCA, which went into effect Nov. 1, according to a news release.

HCA Healthcare is sending postcards to Pinellas County residents telling them to ask emergency medical services to take them to HCA if they’re having a heart attack, the Tampa Bay Times reports. The hospital chain is the largest for-profit group in the nation and is known for its bold marketing campaigns, including billboards on major highways advertising ER wait times.

North Florida residents are speaking out on their experiences at the Gainesville and Lake Mary Veteran’s Affairs hospitals, saying like other veterans across the country, they have had records lost and have been forced to wait months to see a doctor, the Florida Times-Union reports.

Showing once again that hospitals' charges bear no relation to what a stay actually costs for most patients, Medicare officials on Monday released data showing sticker prices soared by four times the rate of inflation.

There are worrisome signs that actual spending is being forced up, as well, because of hospital systems' growing size. The bigger the hospital system, the more clout it tends to have in negotiating contracts with health plans.

Sarasota Memorial Health Care System’s president and CEO Gwen MacKenzie is leaving at the end of May for a leadership position with the nation’s largest Catholic and nonprofit health system, according to a news release.

After spending nearly 10 years with Sarasota Memorial as president and CEO, MacKenzie will return to her home state of Michigan to work for Ascension Health. While her title was not specified in the release, it said she will have administrative and operations responsibility for Ascension's five health systems in Michigan.

All Children's Hospital has agreed to pay $7 million to settle a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging it violated anti-kickback laws by paying inflated salaries and bonuses to doctors so that they would bring in more patients and revenues.

Central Florida doctors are split about the value of joining hospital-owned physician groups, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Those who have joined groups, such as those owned by Florida Hospital, say merging reduces costs and helps them focus more on patient care. Opponents say they don’t have to steer patients to a certain hospital, providing patients more choice, the Sentinel reports.

International patients come to South Florida facilities bring millions of dollars, and as the Miami Herald reports, the new owners of Miami’s Metropolitan Hospital may increase efforts to capitalize on that market.

Officials from the Florida Department of Health will look to negotiations among surgeons, hospital lawyers and the Florida Department of Health's top attorney as they revise the rule on new trauma centers, the News Service of Florida reports.

The talks, led by former Supreme Court justice Kenneth Bell, are intended to resolve the disagreement over which applications for new centers are approved.